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Goodbye Plastic Bags? Lessons from the Shopping Plastic Bag Ban in Chile
Summary
Analysis of Chile's single-use plastic bag ban found it reduced approximately 249 kilotons of shopping bag consumption and shifted the market toward paper bags, but also triggered a 50% increase in bin liner sales as consumers purchased replacements for the bags they previously reused. Despite these unintended substitution effects, the study found an average 38% reduction in environmental impact across 15 of 18 assessed categories, supporting the ban's overall environmental effectiveness.
Bans on single-use plastic shopping bags (SUPBs) are a popular policy to tackle plastic pollution. However, their success has been evaluated solely based on reduced SUPBs consumption, ignoring the impacts of substitutes. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the Chilean plastic bag ban law. Results show a reduction of ~249 kilotons of SUPBs consumed and a change in the materiality of shopping bags (mainly toward paper), but also an increase of more than 50% of bin liners after the enactment of the ban. Despite some undesired effects, an improvement in the environmental performance of the bag market is obtained in fifteen of the eighteen categories studied. The environmental impacts are on average 38% lower than in the counterfactual scenario. This suggests that the law is being effective in protecting the environment. The strictness of the ban and its rapid enforcement were positive aspects of its design, but ignoring the end-of-life of the bags could be limiting its impact. To reduce the environmental impact of substitutes, it is recommended to create design guidelines for shopping bags and bin liners.